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What Facebook's Acquisition Of Instagram Means For Brands

NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 09: In this photo illustration, the photo-sharing app Instagram fan page is seen on the Facebook website on the Apple Safari web browser on April 9, 2012 in New York City. Facebook Inc. is acquiring photo-sharing app Instagram for approx. $1 billion. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

This article is by David Armano, executive VP, global innovation and integration, and Andrea Teggart, assistant account executive, digital, at Edelman.

This week, Facebook purchased the photo sharing app Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock, its biggest acquisition to date. Arguably the largest and most popular of the more than 6,000 photography iPhone apps, Instagram currently has over 30 million users. The app’s popularity and presence is only continuing to spread, as earlier this month it was finally made available for Android devices; within the first 12 hours it was downloaded more than one million times.

Needless to say, long gone are the days when people predominantly use their point-and-shoot or DSLR cameras to document day-to-day life. According to a geekaphone infographic, the iPhone is the world’s number-one camera; the 16 GB device holds around 15,500 photos and is in the pockets of more than 100 million users.

For Instagram lovers the platform won’t be going anywhere and will stay true to form, for now. But there are a number of implications for markets and brands as well, including strengthening Facebook’s ecosystem and validating the premium put on visual content as well as the connective tissue between digital, social and mobile. In short, more data plus a better Facebook experience (especially in mobile) equals more Facebook for brands.

The five key takeaways of the Facebook/Instagram deal for brands and their social media teams are:

Continued integration of mobile and social: This acquisition gives brands an opportunity to fully integrate their social media campaigns across multiple platforms moving forward. Facebook acquiring Instagram potentially means that brands no longer will have their content shared in “silos” and instead presents various opportunities like tagging Facebook friends or fans in Instagram photos or geo-targeting Instagram pictures based on Facebook Places.

Currently, Instagram is a mobile application with limited web functionality, as users currently can’t edit photos on the web through Instagram. It’s possible that Facebook will expand the Instagram experience beyond mobile to the social space and allow users to edit photos with Instagram filters directly from their Facebook page.

In June 2011, the Facebook team was testing the idea of a standalone Facebook photo app that would compete with Instagram and allow uses to browse, filter, edit and publish photos. With the Instagram acquisition, Facebook potentially can do the same thing allowing users to edit entire albums of Facebook photos with Instagram filters all within one platform.

Visual storytelling is key: Individuals and brands alike need to think visually in order to connect with their community and target audience. It takes more than written words to catch people’s attention and maintain interest. Instagram’s social currency is focused on the visual first and written text second. Users can select from 18 different filters when editing and customizing their photo with less priority on the written copy. Captions are text only and don’t currently allow for hyperlinks.

In a TechCrunch interview, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said, “By no means do we think of Instagram as just a photo-sharing service. It’s something that a lot of people lump us into, but we’d like to think of ourselves as a storytelling service. It’s the way you go out in the world and tell a story about your life.” The idea of storytelling ties into Facebook Timeline, where individual users and brands can tell their own story by filling in past information as well as highlighting the best parts of life (or brand’s history).

Facebook users want to see and interact with images; posts that include a photo album or picture generate about 120% to 180% more engagement than the average post. There are also 250 million photos uploaded on Facebook every day. It’s plain and simple: the brands (and individuals) most successful on Instagram and also on Facebook are the ones who don’t underestimate the power of a photograph.

Tighter integration with Facebook Timeline and Open Graph: In January 2012, Instagram tweaked its platform using Facebook’s Photos API allowing users to share photos in full size along with the image’s Instagram caption and a link to the public URL. The Instagram integration with Facebook Timeline gives brands an opportunity to tap into Facebook’s 800 million users that might not be using Instagram and will likely continue to build upon Instagram’s sharing reach outside the mobile platform.

With Facebook’s Open Graph, thirdparty apps are able to integrate into a user’s Facebook experience – much like how Spotify displays what songs you or your friends are listening to directly on the Facebook News Feed and Ticker. Facebook now has the opportunity to expand their open graph with Instagram even further, allowing Instagram to have access to additional APIs and beta features. According to an Inside Facebook article, Facebook and Instagram have been working together on an Open Graph integration for weeks.

Distribution and Exposure: Regardless if users have a Facebook profile or not, Facebook now has access to the over 30 million users currently on Instagram. The acquisition expands both Facebook and Instagram’s reach and increases visibility outside of the respective platforms.

Instagram was designed for the mobile device, and both the iOS and Android versions offer a virtually seamless and beautiful experience. The same is not true for the Facebook mobile app; many users complain about the platform’s current mobile functionality. The acquisition gives Facebook instant access to Instagram’s brilliant talent and IP.

Facebook has access to your Instagram data: According to Facebook’s current terms of service, the social platform has license to use any content you post on or in connection to Facebook. Through the acquisition, this means more access to data, including location, for Facebook; any time you post a photo from Instagram or upload natively to your Facebook page, Facebook automatically owns the intellectual property, including those not published on Facebook.

Instagram is an interest graph application; users are uploading and sharing visual content that interests them and then self-tagging or categorizing their content. Now that Facebook has direct access to your Instagram data, the platform will also have your interests via tags saved to their platform’s back end. For example, NBC News posted an image on Instagram including the tags #Instagram and #Facebook in the caption. This categorizes the image and allows other users to quickly notice the image relates to the topic (or interest) of Instagram and Facebook. Users can then click the tag to find other images with the same tag.

Even if the Instagram experience stays as is, the bottom line is that it opens the door to Facebook for additional data. For brands, this means Facebook potentially becomes smarter and even more relevant and ever present in the lives of millions of social participants. In addition, it gives Facebook more resources—especially in mobile development, which could improve the Facebook experience on mobile devices and tablets leading to even deeper engagement with the platform. For brands that believe that their audience is already on Facebook—the acquisition makes for an even stronger case to be an active part of the Facebook ecosystem.

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So far instigram has upgraded their performance. Perhaps could be the largest and most popular of the more of 6,000 photography iPhone apps. They have step up their game currently has over 30 millions users. Their popularity is quickly spreading, integrated to multiply devices and sharing phots in a number of different ways